John J. Crittenden

John Jordan Crittenden (10 September 1787-26 July 1863) was a US Senator from Kentucky from 4 March 1817 to 4 March 1819 (succeeding Martin D. Hardin and preceding Richard Mentor Johnson), from 4 March 1835 to 4 March 1841 (succeeding George M. Bibb and preceding James Turner Morehead), from 31 March 1842 to 12 June 1848 (succeeding Henry Clay and preceding Thomas Metcalfe), and from 4 March 1855 to 4 March 1861 (succeeding Archibald Dixon and preceding John C. Breckinridge); US Attorney General from 5 March to 12 September 1841 (succeeding Henry D. Gilpin and preceding Hugh S. Legare) and from 22 July 1850 to 4 March 1853 (succeeding Reverdy Johnson and preceding Caleb Cushing), Governor of Kentucky from 6 September 1848 to 31 July 1850 (succeeding William Owsley and preceding John L. Helm), and a member of the US House of Representatives from Kentucky's 8th district from 4 March 1861 to 3 March 1863 (succeeding William E. Simms and preceding William H. Randall).

Biography
John Jordan Crittenden was born in Versailles, Kentucky in 1787, and he became a lawyer in 1807. From 1811 to 1817, he represented Logan County in the Kentucky House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican, and he served as an aide-de-camp to Governor Isaac Shelby at the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812. In 1817, he was elected to the first of many terms in the US Senate. With the advent of the Second Party System, he aligned with the National Republican Party and was a fervent supporter of Henry Clay and opponent of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.

In 1828, President John Quincy Adams nominated Crittenden to the US Supreme Court, but the Senators postponed the vote until President-elect Jackson could find his own man. He briefly served as Attorney General under President William Henry Harrison in 1841, but political differences with the short-lived Harrison's successor John Tyler led to his resignation. In 1848, he was elected Governor of Kentucky with the goal of helping Zachary Taylor win the presidential election, but he declined a position in Taylor's cabinet out of fear of being accused of making a "corrupt bargain". Following Taylor's death in 1850, Crittenden accepted Millard Fillmore's nomination for him to serve as Attorney General.

As the American Whig Party crumbled in the 1850s, Crittenden joined the Know Nothings, and he urged compromise on the issue of slavery to prevent the breakup of the United States. As bitter partisanship increased the threat of secession, Crittenden formed the moderate Constitutional Union Party, although he refused to be its 1860 presidential nominee. His series of pro-compromise resolutions and constitutional amendments were not passed by the US Congress, and the American Civil War broke out in 1861. One of Crittenden's sons, George B. Crittenden, became a general in the Confederate States Army, while his other son, Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, served in the US Army. As a member of the US House of Representatives, he was a critic of President Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the admission of West Virginia to the Union, and he died in office in 1863.